Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL HISTORY 253
High-King, Ard-Righ Erenn Vile, banquetting in Glan
na Smole, Dodder-banks, with his people. Amongst
those who sit and eat under the king's eye, mentioned
quite casually, are the king's swine-herds. Duff, Donn,
and Dorcha, the swine-herds, feast there too, the instru-
ments of their profession racked above them and behind,
on the wall, like the shield and spear of the warrior. Your
men, if I see at all clearly the lines along which your work
must expand and advance, will dine with you and your
officers, and forget the rigours and sternnesses of the
past and of the day in the glow and fraternity of the well-
spread evening board. And let me add another little
touch of old-world wisdom :
"Tell me, O grandson of Conn, what are the tokens
of a fool?"
" A laughing face in the council, and a serious one at
the feast."
Wise and witty this, I think. Such as might have
been uttered by some laconic sage of the unwalled city,
pleasant and sarcastic over his black broth, by him said,
and recorded by old Plutarch. Compare the stupid
dinner-party of the moderns with the joviality of Parlia-
ment, revelling into the small hours. For, indeed, there
has been a great deal of wisdom as well as valour and goodness
in this poor distressful country, and her history, when
you, or men such as you, dig it out like gold from the
depths of our manuscripts and printed archives, will prove,
in a sense you can now little realise, veritably a light to
your feet and a lamp to your path, and more, far more
than their Bible was to the heroic Puritan race, whose